Posted on Oct 22, 2009

In just three short years, Americans have gotten 20 points dumber. That’s if you count a belief in the climate crisis, and the mounting science behind it, as a sign of brains.

Blame the people who popularized global warming as a phrase. The ice caps may be melting and half of California has been on fire, but if it’s a relatively cool summer, everyone’s a skeptic.

To be fair to the land of the free and home of the creationists, most of us still believe there’s “solid evidence that the earth is warming,” but that number was much higher, 77 percent, in 2006. Whatever you’re doing, Al Gore, it isn’t working. Step on it. —PZS

In a poll of 1,500 adults by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press, released Thursday, the number of people saying there is strong scientific evidence that the Earth has gotten warmer over the past few decades is down from 71 percent in April of last year and from 77 percent when Pew started asking the question in 2006. The number of people who see the situation as a serious problem also has declined.

The steepest drop has occurred during the past year, as Congress and the Obama administration have taken steps to control heat-trapping emissions for the first time and international negotiations for a new treaty to slow global warming have been under way. At the same time, there has been mounting scientific evidence of climate change — from melting ice caps to the world’s oceans hitting the highest monthly recorded temperatures this summer.